The big gap in Trump's travel ban (NYT)

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/health/coronavirus-travel-ban.html
They Fled Coronavirus in Europe. Border Agents Asked if They’d Visited China or Iran.
Americans returning from Italy and Spain say border control officials didn’t screen them or tell them to isolate themselves.
By Roni Caryn Rabin
March 19, 2020

When Pam Mundus and a friend landed in Milan for a weeklong vacation on Feb. 23, uniformed airport workers in face masks, attempting to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, took their temperatures.

But when Ms. Mundus returned home on a direct flight from Rome to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on March 1, no one questioned her about her time in Italy or whether she might have been exposed to the illness. At that stage, the State Department had already urged Americans to reconsider travel to Italy; there were at least 1,500 cases there and 34 deaths related to the coronavirus by then.

“The only question we were asked was, ‘Have you been to China?’” Ms. Mundus, 62, said in a phone interview from her home on eastern Long Island, where she has been in self-quarantine since her return.

President Trump has claimed credit for slowing the spread of Covid-19 in the United States by imposing a ban in late January on some travelers who had recently been to China. His administration has since barred entry to travelers who have been in Iran, nearly 30 European countries and the United Kingdom.

And the restrictions applied only to foreign citizens, despite the fact that the virus could be transmitted just as easily by the many Americans returning home in droves, who were getting confusing and inconsistent messages on how to protect themselves and their communities — or in many cases, no advice at all.

“The policy makes no sense,” said Danielle Ompad, an epidemiologist at the N.Y.U. School of Public Health. “It was based on nationality, not risk of infectiousness, and the two are not synonymous.”

Josh Michaud, an associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, went further last week. When Mr. Trump barred Europeans from entering the United States, he tweeted that the move “makes about as much sense as a homeowner installing a fire alarm in the living room while the kitchen is going up in flames.”

Ari Minelli, a New York City architect who cut short a trip to Spain, landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday evening, but was not provided any guidance on self-monitoring or self-quarantine. Spain by then had more than 4,000 cases and had just declared a state of emergency.

Mr. Minelli, who flew home from Barcelona through London, was asked before he boarded the flight in England only if he had been to China or to Iran. But the epicenter of the outbreak had already shifted to Europe.